Remodeling

Earlier this week we agreed, after some bantering back and forth, to a figure for the contractor’s overages. He was to come over this evening to settle up and take some pictures for his business’s facebook page. On Wednesday he emailed to ask if he could do it on Thursday which was fine by us because Wednesday night while emptying the dishwasher, it tried to escape from under the counter top. We wanted it re-restrained.

Contractor guy decided that instead of using the screwed in bracket the counter top installers had mounted to the cabinets it would be nicer to attach a piece of the cabinet trim with construction adhesive to the counter top and screw the dishwasher mounting tabs to it. We agreed because it would look nicer. The adhesive held for 2 weeks.

Contractor guy arrived on Thursday carrying a small tool bag and an idea on how to fix the problem. He would drill at angle through the wood trim piece into the cabinet and use a couple of long wood screws to hold it in place. He drilled one hole and then realized he needed an extension for the drill to get a screwdriver bit in there to tighten the screw. He asked if I had one one and could he borrow it. I went out in the garage and brought it back to him.

Halfway thru screwing in the first screw the battery in his screw driver wound down. “Do you have a driver I could borrow?” Back to the garage for that too. He drills the second hole and then starts rooting around in his bag. “Do you have a longer wood screw than this?” I turn to head to the garage for a third time when he says, “Never mind, found one.” He tests the sturdiness of his work and hands me back my stuff.

Contractor guy takes several pictures with his phone, asks if we are happy with the kitchen (yes we are) and we settle up. He drives off and I go get the vacuum cleaner to suck up all the wood shavings from his drilling. If you just look at the dishwasher standing in the kitchen it looks fine. But if you open the dishwasher door and look up at the workmanship just finished, it looks kind of sloppy.

And that is pretty much a microcosm of the entire kitchen remodel project. No real planning of the project beforehand, borrow the homeowner’s tools, do some satisfactory work, get paid and leave the clean up to someone else.

Last night the ceiling and tonight the door/window trim got one coat of white paint. For the ceiling that might be all it takes, but the trim is going to need at least one more coat, probably two.

The transition from yellow wall to white ceiling looks dirty, cabinet crown molding to ceiling it looks fine. I’m pretty sure it is just shadow, but Donna is not happy, so we are exploring options. First thought is to paint a 1″ section of the ceiling with the same yellow as the wall. If that looks weird we will go with an idea from cabinet guy, paint the ceiling a lighter shade of the wall color.

We have a busy day tomorrow, but I hope to finish the painting on Sunday, even if it means one coat in the morning and a second coat that night.

Painted the visible sections of the kitchen walls yellow today. It is definitely a bit brighter than the yellow we had. It is almost the same as the old tile. Took two coats and even with the fancy Valspar paint + primer stuff I think I need a third coat to cover the 3″ of blue color along the ceiling that was hidden by the old border. Tomorrow I’ll do the ceiling, then Tuesday and Wednesday I will paint the trim around window and doors a gloss white.

If you count the bagels bought there last Tuesday and consumed at work on Wednesday (and I do) we have eaten Dunkin Donuts every morning since last Sunday. Tomorrow the streak ends. Maybe…

Well, it’s almost over. The dishwasher is in and the contractor is finished. He is coming over tomorrow morning to settle up. We moved a bunch of stuff from our temp kitchen (the dining room) into the new kitchen tonight. It is slow going as we have to pick a spot to put the items in. A lot of the layout is similar to what we had, so we can put stuff back in the generally the same area, but we have new features that have to be worked into our routine.

All that is left to do is that I need to paint. We have picked out the colors, gloss white for the trim and yellow for what little wall shows. The old kitchen was yellow too, but very pale, this time we picked a few shades brighter.

I took several pictures tonight, but when the camera flash fires the colors in the resulting photo do not look anything like they do in real life. When hand holding the shot, the colors are more true to life, but everything is slightly blurry. This one was the best one of the bunch showing what the colors of everything are. After next week I’ll do another series of 5 photos of the new kitchen like I did of the original kitchen before we started this whole thing.

The counter top folks called Thursday afternoon to say that they were running behind and could they do the install on Saturday instead of Friday. We had no real problem with that, so we were penciled in for between 8 and noon on Saturday instead of Friday.

On Wednesday we had scheduled delivery of our new fridge for Saturday afternoon. So wouldn’t you know it, the counter top people were late and the Lowe’s delivery truck was early. They followed each other down Boardman Road to our driveway. I climbed on the running board of the Lowe’s truck and asked if they had another delivery to make and then they could come back later. Nope. I told them the counter top folks are using the garage entry, so they could use the front door.

Trouble is, that way in has the narrower door to go through to get to the kitchen. They tried once and could not get through. They tried another angle and had to back up again. For attempt number three they finally relented and took the doors off. Guess what? That didn’t work either. They got the top part through the door but had to stop when the plastic panel on the bottom that covers the coil intake hit the door frame. That time they only had to back up a bit so the fellow on this side of the door could pop off the panel.

If they had just come back mid-afternoon or arrived at the time they were supposed to, they could have spent 10 minutes tops delivering the fridge instead of spending 45 minutes monkeying around trying to fit a 30″ wide appliance through a 28-1/2″ wide door.